church of San Vitale. It became part of the Kingdom of Italy in 1861 and today is an agricultural and industrial city, with industries that include petroleum and natural-gas refining.
Ravi \'ra-ve\ River River, northwestern India and northeastern Pakistan, one of the five main rivers of the Punjab. It rises in the Himalayas in Him¬ achal Pradesh state, India, and flows past Chamba, turning southwest at the boundary of Jammu and Kashmir state. It then flows to the Pakistani border and along it before entering Pakistani Punjab. In Pakistan it runs past Lahore and turns west near Kamalia, emptying into the Chenab River after a course of about 450 mi (725 km).
Rawalpindi \,ra-w3l-'pin-de\ City (pop., 1998: 1,406,214), Punjab province, northern Pakistan, southwest of Islamabad. In ancient times, the locality was included in the Achaemenian Persian Empire. The ancient city of Taxila has been identified with nearby ruins. Strategically located, it controls the routes to the Kashmir region and was the site of an impor¬ tant British military station. The former capital of Pakistan (1959-69), Rawalpindi is the headquarters of Pakistan’s army and an administrative, commercial, and industrial centre. Wheat, barley, com, and millet are the chief crops grown in the area. Mankial, south of the city, is the site of a Buddhist stupa dating to the 3rd century bc.
Rawlings, Jerry J(ohn) (b. June 22, 1947, Accra, Ghana) Ruler of Ghana (1981-2001). Of Scottish and Ghanaian descent, Rawlings, then a junior air force officer, first overthrew the government in 1979, but he yielded power to a freely elected civilian president, Hilla Limann. Two years later he ousted Limann. As Ghana’s ruler, he created workers’ coun¬ cils and established production and price controls but later abandoned these measures. His policies afforded Ghana relative political and eco¬ nomic stability. He was returned to office by election in 1996 and stepped down from the presidency in 2001.
Rawlings, Marjorie Kinnan orig. Marjorie Kinnan (b. Aug. 8, 1896, Washington, D.C., U.S.—d. Dec. 14, 1953, St. Augustine, Fla.) U.S. short-story writer and novelist. Rawlings worked as a journalist before moving to backwoods Florida and devoting herself to fiction. Taking her material from the people and land around her, she wrote richly atmo¬ spheric works that resemble vivid factual reporting and are noted for their magical descriptions of landscape. Her best-known novel is The Yearling (1938, Pulitzer Prize), about a boy from a hardscrabble family and the fawn he adopts. Her later works include Cross Creek (1942) and The Sojourner (1953).
Rawls, John (b. Feb. 21,1921, Baltimore, Md., U.S.—d. Nov. 24,2002, Lexington, Mass.) U.S. political philosopher. He taught at Cornell Univer¬ sity (1962-79) and later at Harvard University. He wrote primarily on political philosophy and ethics. His Theory of Justice (1971) is widely rec¬ ognized as the major work in 20th-century political philosophy. In that work and others Rawls sought to develop a conception of justice appro¬ priate to a democratic society. He believes that utilitarianism, which enjoins maximizing overall happiness, inadequately protects freedom and equality, the core liberal and democratic values. Following Jean-Jacques Rousseau and Immanuel Kant, he appealed to the idea of a social contract: he depicted justice as the result of a hypothetical agreement among free persons acting from a position of equal right. To insure a fair, impartial agreement, Rawls situated parties to it equally by imposing a “veil of ignorance”: parties do not know any particular facts about themselves and others (e.g., their tal¬ ents, social class, wealth, or religious and other values) or even facts about history or their society. From this “original position” Rawls contends that free persons would agree to a liberal egalitarian conception of justice, or “justice as fairness.” This conception comprises two principles: (1) certain basic liberties, such as freedom of thought and association, are so important that they take precedence over other social values, such as eco¬ nomic efficiency and improving the welfare of the poor; (2) offices and positions of authority are to be open to all under conditions of equality of opportunity.
ray Any of 300-350 mostly marine species of cartilaginous fish (order Batoidei) found worldwide and clas¬ sified as ELECTRIC RAYS, SAWFISHES,
skates, and stingrays. Many species
Ravana, the 10-headed demon-king, detail from a Guler painting of the Ramayana, c. 1720; in the Cleveland Museum of Art.
COURTESY OF THE CLEVELAND MUSEUM OF ART, OHIO, GIFT OF GEORGE P. BICKFORD
piano piece Jeux d’eau (completed
Cow-nosed ray (Rhinoptera bonasus), a stingray
PAINTING BY RICHARD ELLIS
© 2006 Encyclopaedia Britannica, Inc.
1594 I Ray ► Raymond of Penafort
are slow-moving bottom-dwellers. The gill openings and mouth are on the underside of the flattened body. Winglike pectoral fins extend along the sides of the head. All but electric rays have a long, slender tail, often with saw-edged, venomous spines, and rough, often spiny, skin. See also MANTA RAY.
Ray, James Earl (b. March 10, 1928, Alton, Ill., U.S.—d. April 23, 1998, Nashville, Tenn.) Assassin of Martin Luther King, Jr. Ray was a petty criminal who had been sentenced several times to prison; he escaped from the Missouri state prison in 1967. In Memphis, Tenn., on April 4, 1968, he shot King from the window of a rooming house as King emerged from his motel room across the street. Ray fled to Toronto, London, Lisbon, and back to London, where he was arrested on June 8. In Memphis he pleaded guilty and was sentenced to 99 years in prison. Months later, he recanted his confession, without effect. Later in life, his unsuccessful pleas to have his case reopened were supported by some civil rights leaders, notably the King family.
Ray, John (b. Nov. 29, 1627, Black Notley, Essex, Eng.—d. Jan. 17, 1705, Black Notley) British naturalist and botanist. He attended Cam¬ bridge University and spent many years there as a fellow. With Francis Wil- lughby (1635-1672) he undertook a complete catalog of living things, of which he published numerous volumes. His enduring legacy to botany was the establishment of species as the ultimate unit of taxonomy. He attempted to base his systems of classification on all the structural characteristics of organisms, including internal anatomy, rather than on a single feature. By insisting on the importance of lungs and heart structure, he effectively established the class of mammals, and he divided insects according to the presence or absence of multiple metamorphoses. Coming closer to a truly natural system of taxonomy than had any of his contemporaries, Ray helped make possible Carolus Linnaeus’s later contributions.
Ray, Man See Man Ray
Ray, Nicholas orig. Raymond Nicholas Kienzle (b. Aug. 7, 1911, Galesville, Wis., U.S.—d. June 16, 1979, New York, N.Y.) U.S. film director. He studied architecture and drama and began directing plays in the mid-1930s. After working in New York with John Houseman and Elia Kazan, he followed them to Hollywood, where he directed They Live by Night (1948). Ray was praised for demonstrating a personal style in mov¬ ies such as In a Lonely Place (1950), The Lusty Men (1952), Johnny Gui¬ tar (1954), and the landmark film of youthful rebellion, Rebel Without a Cause (1955). He also directed Bigger Than Life (1956), Bitter Victory (1958), and 55 Days at Peking (1963). He later tried directing in Yugo¬ slavia and taught at the State University of New York.
Ray, Satyajit (b. May 2, 1921, Calcutta, India—d. April 23, 1992, Cal¬ cutta) Bengali-Indian film director.
After studying with Rabindranath Tagore, he became art director of an ad agency and a book illustrator. He sold all his possessions to make his first film, Pather Panchali (1955), a story of village life. With Aparajito (1956) and The World of Apu (1959), he completed the brilliant Apu Tril¬ ogy and brought Indian cinema to world attention. He later won acclaim for Devi (1960), Two Daughters (1961), The Big City (1964), The Lonely Wife (1964), The Chess Players (1977), The Home and the World (1984), and The Visi¬ tor (1990). He wrote all his own screenplays, noted for their human¬ ism and poetry, and often composed the music for his films, though his short stories and novellas became his main source of income.